Muso suffering due to weak wifi signal

Phil, what are you referring to as 'managed' wireless, I assume you are not referring to Meraki or equivalent. Or are you talking about having dedicated managed wireless controllers and their slave access points - again probably overkill for many homes - and can have rather involved wiring - but are great for hotels, restaurants and shops.

If you have many participating access points I really would recommend meshing technology. Again I haven't seen much for the home - but increasingly common elsewhere.- although the throughput can be interesting depending on the path through the mesh.

Simon

Hi Simon,

The Ubiquiti kit provides a decent managed solution - and by managed I mean controlled from a single UI as a single wireless network and doing intelligent handoff between devices and access points. 

I wouldn't really suggest mesh networks as - as you suggest - the throughput can be somewhat random as parts of the mesh can get swamped.

Cheers

Phil

Phil, thanks - I have heard of Ubquiti - but not played with it - have you at Naim  also looked at  the Ubiquiti AirRouter HP Indoor 802.11n WiFi Router looks quite interesting with lots of possible tweaks

BTW meshing is generally ok I feel  if the mesh is designed properly as it should hand off traffic to less busy nodes - I was referring to some tests I have done recently with a major Wifi vendor where we have found some meshed topologies can struggle if the connected access points are not appropriately distributed across the mesh.

I see the Ubiquiti APs do support meshing.

Simon

Well I am now the proud owner of a virgin media superhub 2ac but unfortunately it has not fixed the problem.

In fact I am having a problem getting the Naim App to recognise the Muso!!

I go through the setup procedure and set up the Muso as an AirPlay speaker but after it eventually shows the White light connected to wifi it does not appear in the Naim App. It just shows no Rooms Found. Spotify connect is fine though.

My wifi signal unfortunately does not have a greater range than the old superhub1 but no matter as this was a free upgrade anyway.

I now need to consider the options to solve this.

If anyone has any ideas why the Naim App cannot see the Muso it would be appreciated.

thanks Prem.

"My wifi signal unfortunately does not have a greater range than the old superhub1..."

Something wrong there.  I think most notice the range increase is significant. We are in a Victorian house with thick walls and the router downstairs and it made a significant difference to accessing WiFi upstairs without the need for an additional router.

G

I have just gone through the setup routine again and I noticed when using AirPlay to connect Muso to wifi after saying Muso has joined underneath it says Find App For Accessory.

I am not sure if this is indicating a problem or not.

Yep could be Graeme. I have certainly noticed greater speed on browsing the Internet but I still can't get the Muso to pick up the wifi signal where I want to. Other devices such as Ipad, phone etc are getting good signal in the room I want to use the Muso.

We have seen a lot of issues with SuperHubs seemingly randomlyGon dropping Bonjour and UPnP discovery packets - our normal suggestion would be rather than trying to get the SuperHub to be reliable then drop in a cable router between your network and the SuperHub (setting the SuperHub to cablemodem mode) ... We've recently picked up half a dozen LinkSys EA6300's to use for demos and shows and they're proving reliable so far.

Thanks for replying Phil. Do the Linksys routers have a very good range? The router would be on 2nd floor in loft at front of house and the Muso on ground floor at rear of house. I realise you can't give any guarantees but any inkling would help. 

Thanks Prem.

WiFi coverage is pretty much impossible to just stick a finger in the air and predict. It depends on the construction of your house, the position of the router and the construction and orientation of the aerials in the router itself.

I've found the LinkSys to be *MUCH* better for coverage that my AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and BT HomeHub 3 but normally at home I use Ubiquiti Unifi wireless access points and turn off the WiFi in my router itself.

Cheers

Phil

The Airport Extreme/Express setup works well for me, but on the back of Phil's experience, I'd go with his Linksys recommendation instead. It's also much cheaper than an Airport Extreme. Linksys also make a 'Bridge' device, which I think would be worth using near your Muso, to which you can connect it with an Ethernet cable in the same way that many of us use an Airport Express. 

Thanks for your input Chris. I am going to investigate a router and bridge type solution as you suggest. 

Once I have a good idea what I want I will try and find somewhere that will do a free exchange if it does not work. I would rather pay a little more in the first instant for this type of service.

Premmyboy - drop me an email directly ... phil.harris@naimaudio.com

Cheers

Phil

Wait......  The MuSo is 802.11g???       I thought that must be a typo in the product specs.  I guess I'll be plugging in my Netgear WNCE2001 wireless adapter into the MuSo's ethernet socket to get 802.11n.

sigh!

The AirportExpress is good in as far as it works well with layer 2 discovery and multicast methods which are essential for UPnP control points, Apple Bonjour for Spotify Connect and AirPlay.

Reading this forum, you see many people talking about not being able to 'see' their player from the Naim app or disappearing devices... This is often enabled by these multicast and discovery network methods. There is a lot more to Wifi than just 'coverage' and anyway with 802.11 b and g the coverage options are relatively limited.

Simon

I'd recommend that you do just that! Weather or not it's anything to do with 802.11ac vs. n vs. g, I'm not qualified to say. But I could not, for the life of me, persuade my Superuniti to behave itself over an otherwise robust wireless network, and the only conclusion I can draw is that the Naim wifi module is the source of the problem. Once I bypassed it, I've never looked back.

I should add that I'm a bit uncomfortable with publicly criticising Naim over this. Maybe it's their Achilles Heel, but given the enjoyment I've had from listening to music through their hardware, and given their unrivalled customer support, it's something I can put up with.

Maybe it's a cunning strategy on Naim's part.  Have a slightly dodgy wireless adaptor so that you give up and get ethernet installed.  If so it worked on me :-) 

And to be fair I'm so glad I did - everything "just works" now.  And not just the hifi.  I have a couple of the Unifi thingies Phil has so I have seamless reiable wifi throughout the house to the benefit of phones, tablets, laptops etc.

On a different note, when I had Muso I found its wifi reception rather strong and stable. It was once put in the living room to see what it’s worth. At that location Muso was 46-48ft away from the nearest wireless router and just worked superbly (iRadio, Spotify Connect and Upnp streaming all inc.)

UQ2 in the same place in wifi mode and  as can be expected, no joy. Yet Muso couldn’t playback iRadio stations more than two-three minutes without dropout or unending buffer issues when it was hardwired. That made me think it was primarily honed for wireless connection though manufacturer recommends Ethernet.     

Same here Hal, mine works better in wi-fi than wired. Drop outs are considerably less.

Well I finally have a workable solution. I would just like to publicly thank Phil Harris for all his time and help even on a Sunday to find a workable solution for me.

The new Superhub has been switched to modem only mode and I have installed a Linksys EA6300 router connected to it. This has resolved the problem of the Naim App not being able to see My Muso.

Unfortunately the range of the Linksys was still not good enough to provide good wifi coverage to where I wanted the Muso to be located.

However now that I'm not constrained by where the superhub is located I will run an ethernet cable from the loft to the room below and site my Linksys router and Nas drive there. I have tested this and it works great. The Muso can then receive a satisfactory wifi signal and appears to run continuosly without any dropouts.

I also have the added advantage of a stronger wifi signal throughout the house by doing this.

Yippee!!

Thanks to everybody who posted for their help and ideas.

prem.